DANCE
Shunde Cuisine "Double Skin Milk" Pop-Up Store
Shunde double-skin milk is a traditional Cantonese dessert with a history of over 100 years.
Known for its smooth texture and rich milk flavor, it is also part of Shunde’s intangible cultural heritage.
Through this pop-up project, we wanted to help this traditional dessert reach more people by coming up with our own ideas for its design and marketing.
By combining visual design, customer research, and promotional strategies, we explored how small changes in presentation and marketing could make a difference to a local business.
We designed promotional posters and cup sleeves with seasonal trends and customer experience in mind.
Around the Start of Autumn (立秋), the Chinese social media trend of “the first cup of milk tea of autumn” (秋天的第一杯奶茶) often sparks conversations about sharing drinks with loved ones. Inspired by this trend, we explored how seasonal cultural moments could make our promotion more relatable and engaging.
Our pop-up also coincided with Qixi Festival, China's traditional Valentine's Day. To mark the occasion, I designed heart-shaped cup sleeves that formed a complete heart when two cups were placed together. This small design detail connected the product with the spirit of the festival, turning its packaging into a playful and shareable experience.
With the shop located away from the main street, attracting customers required more than simply waiting for them to arrive. Our team split up to promote the pop-up in busier areas of the commercial district, approaching passersby with a raffle box to draw attention and invite them to visit. I also helped organize raffles and buy-one-get-one (BOGO) promotions to encourage participation.
One of my most memorable experiences was researching competing dessert shops. We visited other businesses selling double-skin milk, sampled their products, and learned about their pricing and business operations through our conversations. After trying dessert after dessert, I came to appreciate how firsthand observation and customer research could inform our own decisions.
Our team's design and promotional efforts helped attract foot traffic and contributed to approximately RMB 4,000 in daily sales.
This project showed me that creative work is not only about making something look appealing. Design, timing, location, and customer engagement all shape how people discover and experience a product. From designing a pair of connected cup sleeves to approaching strangers on a busy street, I learned to think about creativity as something that must work in the real world—not just on a screen.